No surprise, then, that he dismisses what has become almost
de rigueur for modern dancers: a college-level education. "Most
of it in my opinion is just a big bag of wind," said Mr.
Morris, whose Mark Morris Dance Group turned 25 this year. "Most
college-level dance education should be pedagogy and criticism
and history and theory and whatever and not be about performing
dance."

Conservatory training fares little better in Mr. Morris's
view. "I mostly think it ruins people," he said, though
he did concede that Juilliard may be doing something right, given
the fact that five of his dancers are graduates. "The .001
percent of people who graduate and become dance professionals,
hurray for them," he said. "They are very lucky. I
think most often it's in spite of school."

College-level dance programs are proliferating. Dance magazine's
College Guide lists more than 500 such programs, up from 131
in 1966. But stable, paying jobs in the field are hard to find.
And the utility of a college degree in dancing is a matter of
endless debate.

Much of the training of modern dancers still takes place in
independent dance studios, not colleges, universities or conservatories.
Indeed, conservatories like the Juilliard School and the dance
program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts admit
students only by audition, which means most people have some
kind of training before they even apply. And if a number of dancers
who did go to college say they were first exposed to modern dance
in college, they add that they really learned to dance in childhood,
from their first ballet, jazz or tap teachers.

So while college-age dancers, like college football players,
face long odds of landing a spot in the pros, the picture is
far murkier for the dancer than the running back: the football
player at least knows that he has to go to college to have a
shot at the N.F.L. "I thought you had to put all your eggs
in that basket to make it happen," said Lauren Grant, who
went to the Tisch School and joined the Morris company in 1998.
"I know now that's not true." She credits N.Y.U. with
helping her get her job with Mr. Morris, but she also says she
wishes she had received a deeper academic education.

Not going to college at all gives young dancers a head start
on what in many cases is a short career, and it remains the norm
for professional ballet dancers. Modern dance is physically more
permissive, but still mainly a young person's pursuit; those
who rise through the ranks outside academia may be at a disadvantage
when it comes to finding teaching jobs after they retire from
the stage.

"In this climate, if you want to teach, you have to have
a master's," said Maile Okamura, who joined the Morris company
in 2001, after a career in ballet, and is one of just two of
Mr. Morris's 17 dancers who lack a college degree. "I don't
even have a bachelor's. I'm outside that system. I'm not sure
how it's going to pan out."

Rima Faber, the program director of the nonprofit National
Dance Education Organization, which promotes dance training,
said the dance boom in colleges was partly due to the passage
of the anti-sex-discrimination law Title IX in 1972 and the Equal
Educational Opportunity Act of 1974. "Physical education
went co-ed," she said. "And physical education for
women started focusing on dance."

In the 1980's and 90's, most of these programs migrated out
of the gym and into fine-arts departments. Even so, most are
not designed to train professional performers. A star or two
may emerge every few years, but many more alumni become teachers
or scholars, or leave the field entirely. Some administrators
say their programs have flourished simply because people love
to dance.

The dance department at Juilliard, which has the luxury of
admitting only the best of the best, estimates that in the last
few years some 60 to 70 percent of students have found work as
dancers after graduating. "We are sending a steady stream
of young dance artists into the field, where they are being very
well received," said Lawrence Rhodes, the director of Juilliard's
dance division.

Tisch does not maintain employment statistics for its graduates,
but Linda Tarnay, the chairwoman of the dance department, does
acknowledge the awkwardness of preprofessional training for a
profession with few paid jobs.

"We have grant-writing workshops," Ms. Tarnay said.
"We have tax people come and talk to them about how to keep
their taxes. But how to get a paying job? I can't say we do very
well at that. I don't know what we could do."

There are no national statistics available, but the national
service organization Dance/USA's surveys of two major metropolitan
areas - Washington in 2003 and Chicago in 2002 - found that only
21 of the 286 companies in those two cities offered salaried
positions. About half did not pay dancers at all.

Nonetheless, Ms. Tarnay said that applications to the Tisch
dance program have been increasing; last year 450 people auditioned
for 30 slots. "I think it's a miracle that anybody comes,"
she said. "I'm amazed every year that people still want
to do this."

An added difficulty for educators trying to cram life skills
into their curriculums is that dancers today must be more physically
versatile than ever. Modern techniques have proliferated, and
many choreographers now work on a project basis, so most dancers
perform with different choreographers over the course of their
careers.

"There aren't enough hours in the day to do all the kinds
of disciplines and techniques and forms of dance," Mr. Rhodes
of Juilliard said. "The variety of what is expected of students
has expanded hugely."

Bradon McDonald, a 1997 Juilliard graduate now in the Morris
company, said he was happy that his training focused on dance,
rather than, say, grant writing or public relations. "I
don't think training dancers in business is going to make the
dance world blossom," he said. "I think training dancers
in dancing is the only option."

Dance departments at liberal arts colleges take a different
approach. Brown University, for example, has no dance major and
does not even offer ballet classes; dance classes are offered
through its well-regarded theater, speech and dance department.
"Nobody is training anybody to be a professional in anything
at Brown," said Julie Strandberg, the director of the university's
dance program. "We're training people to be educated, well-rounded
people."

Two of Mr. Morris's dancers attended Brown, but Ms. Strandberg
said that few of the students who dance seriously there stay
in the field. Some become performers or scholars; others become
doctors or lawyers who later serve on the boards of dance companies.

Joe Bowie, who graduated from Brown with honors in English
and American literature and joined the Morris company in 1994,
is an exceptional case: he started dancing in college, on a dare,
and soon dropped his pre-med ambitions. "I was smitten,"
he said.

While a late start like Mr. Bowie's is difficult for a man,
it is near-impossible for a woman. Marjorie Folkman and June
Omura, both members of the Morris company, graduated with honors
from the dance program at Barnard College, which has an extensive
roster of technique classes and is the only school at an Ivy
League university with a dance major.

Having danced since childhood, Ms. Folkman decided to go to
Barnard in part, she said, because she thought attending a conservatory
would have been an intellectual sacrifice. But she spent her
college years second-guessing herself.

"I wanted to transfer out," she said. "I kept
thinking: I should be in a conservatory, because I'm not getting
the training." Today, she says, she is grateful she stayed
in college.

"We graduated knowing that if you can't find work, make
up your own work," Ms. Folkman said, adding that she feels
equipped to tackle a postdance career, whatever it may be. "I
am capable of doing other things. I had to take physics. I had
to read and discuss and debate and be in the world."

All that reading and discussion may even be good for dancing.
"The more widely exposed to all ideas you are, the more
interesting person and therefore dancer you are," Ms. Omura
said, adding that she had given up on a dance career until she
rediscovered modern dance at Barnard. "That sounds fanciful,
but I really believe it's true."

Barnard does not have detailed employment information about
its dance alumni. Mary Cochran, the chairwoman of the college's
department of dance, said that recent dance majors had gone on
to medical school, independent choreography and teaching. One
is a Fulbright scholar; one dances for Neta Pulvermacher; and
one just joined Philadanco, whose founder, Joan Myers Brown,
was the subject of the graduate's senior thesis.

Ultimately, Mr. Morris says he does not care what kind of
degrees, if any, his dancers have; he cares only that they can
dance. His advice to aspiring dancers? "Dance," he
said. "Read. Learn music. Look around. Participate in the
world."

Which, to some, may sound very much like the ideals of a college
education. Presented with this conundrum, Mr. Morris paused.
"You need fabulous parents," he said. "I don't
know what the answer is."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

Correction Thursday, December 22, 2005
An article in The Arts yesterday about the education of professional
dancers misstated the number of schools in the Ivy League that
offer dance majors. In addition to Barnard, which is part of
Columbia University, Cornell offers one.

What Carl Jung
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artists, the poets among us, are the bearers
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